Two from Galilee (13 page)

Hannah began to wipe her hands on her tunic. It was a faded blue washday garment; absently she rubbed her red hands on it, and then, moving carefully to a wooden bench under the tall date palm tree, she sat carefully down. It is nothing, nothing, she firmly informed herself, gripping the sides of the seat. Girls are often irregular in the beginning; they miss their periods for many causes—sleeping in a draft, getting their feet damp in the fields. I warned her about that, she thought in exasperation, but no, she wouldn't listen, she will run about barefoot, old as she is.

Thus she pounced upon pique and annoyance to postpone and assuage the sick fear. It's nothing, nothing, she went on, so why should the blood pump so painfully in my breast and my bowels run thin? Yet now it came surging in upon her, all the signs she had refused to notice. Mary's strange change
late!y—she often sank into deep silences. Where the laughter that once rang out so freely? Where the quick bright word, the singing? And her step. Hannah had noticed her daughter coming from the well with the jugs, or up from the milking with the bulging goatskin bags on her shoulders; instead of the flowing gait that had always given Hannah such pleasure, Mary had been slow-footed, bowed, as if the weight of the vessels was almost too much to bear.

All this flashed through Hannah's consciousness as she sat there, managing a fiercely determined smile. She thrust aside her wretched and unworthy alarm. "We'll brew some herbs," she said. "We'll fix you a potion."

"Don't pretend, Mother," Mary said. "I know what you must be thinking." She had moved away from the smoke now and stood before her, clearly revealed. There was something pleading about her, and yet unflinching. There was about her the cold calm of the innocent. "But you need have no concern. It is not true. I have not lain with any man."

Hannah flinched. Never! Never her Mary . . . even now, betrothed, the thought of Mary thus was a laceration. "Not even Joseph?" The words came spewing out before Hannah could stop them. She caught a fist to her quivering mouth, wishing them unsaid. But there was no calling them back and she could only await their answer.

"Joseph is a good man, Mother. He would be crucified before he would bring dishonor on me or my family."

"He loves you," her mother said helplessly, yet with a certain grimness. "And you love him. There's no denying such things, it is all too evident. He's been waiting for you all his life, and to wait for you now is torment—he can scarcely keep his hands or his eyes away from you. I can see now that forcing you to wait even this long may have been a mistake."

"You mustn't blame yourself, but above all you mustn't blame him," Mary said. "Joseph is an honorable man."

"But you love each other," Hannah cried out. "And heaven forgive me for saying this, but the flesh is weak."

"Yes, yes, we love each other. Postponement of the time when we can honorably come together has been agony for both of us. But whatever you may think of Joseph, Mother, he loves me too much to bring any scandal upon me. And whatever you may think of me—how can you think me so weak, so wanting in respect for you and my father that I would give myself to him as his wife before our actual marriage?"

"How can I?" Hannah moaned, and rocked back and forth on the bench. "Because I'm a woman, and I've lived a long time, Mary. I know that respect for parents, respect even for the Law are sometimes not enough to keep two people apart who love each other."

"Then you don't believe me?"

Hannah had been sitting with her eyes shut. Now she opened them and gazed a long moment at her daughter. "Yes, Mary, I believe you," she said "Heaven knows if I didn't! . . ." She shuddered and shut her eyes once more, as if to escape it. The disgrace. After all her boasting. If now, on top of the humiliation of stepping down, there were to be no proper wedding, but merely a shamed public acknowledgment that the marriage had been consummated in secret—legal as that was, it was still ignoble, degrading. People sneered and made contemptuous jests. No, no. She had been punished enough for her vainglorious claims; God was surely going to spare her this.

As for that other possibility—it was too appalling to consider.
Adultery.
Cleophas was back. High-spirited, impetuous Cleophas who also had loved Mary and was accustomed to snatching what he wished. For Mary there had been only Joseph, nobody but Joseph, yet she had been fond of Cleophas, and she was kind. . . .

These fantastic thoughts lashed through Hannah as she sat trying to regain her composure, her command of the day. The devils were battering at her again: how much do we really know of those close to us, they asked? How much does even the most careful mother know about her child? Look at her, this beautiful small daughter standing before you, a very princess, alien to all you ever were. She harbors a secret still. She is rich and full with a secret thing.

And the devils whipped their tails and screamed: "Adultery means death by stoning! Shame, divorce, death." Even if a man had pounced on her out of the hedges as she came home one night from the meadows, she would be sullied, defiled. Even Joseph would not have her; no man would. . . . Hannah saw her beloved crouching, begging for mercy, heard the stones raining down. She saw the white body bruised and bleeding, perhaps hurled over a cliff. . . .

Hannah sprang up, grabbing at the garments to be plunged into the steaming tub. She must scrub them and cleanse them and spread them out in God's clean thirsty sun. She must again grasp the garments of life and force them into patterns of neatness and precision. What folly to sit wasting time over nothing.

"Come now, let's get busy," she said. "I'll make you a potion that will make your blood flow once more. But first we must finish the washing."

"Mother, wait," Mary reached out a restraining hand. "You had better sit down again. There is something more that I have to tell you. And this—this I fear will be even harder for you to believe."

Joachim let the ox rest at the end of the furrow. The beast had been with him so many years that he regarded it as an old friend. He often talked with it as he plowed or scattered the seed. He was far too law-abiding a Jew to spare it by harnessing it up with the ass, as some of his neighbors did. But he never used the goad except to prod it gently, and at night he always allowed it to cool off, rubbed it down, and washed out its mouth with wine before giving it water and hay.

He stood by it now, regarding his thriving fields. Thus far Jahveh had been merciful. No hail had riddled the early crop of beans and lentils and barley, which soon would be ready to reap. Those inevitable pests—caterpillars, beetles, mice—a host of enemies whose insatiable jaws could spell ruin, had been remarkably scarce this year, and the wheat looked to be plentiful this season. Even considering tithes and taxes, it seemed as if God meant to grant one of his dearest wishes—that he be able to give his firstborn a fine wedding.

He took off his hat and mopped his steaming forehead. Overhead the sky burned hard and blue, a shimmering tent spread over the flowing greens and golds of the hills that seemed to speak of ancient patterns, rhythms that could lead only to eternity and fulfillment with the author of so much beauty. The land of milk and honey. The earthly paradise to which they, God's chosen children, had been led. Joachim's being burned with it, flowed into it, feeling its harmonies along with the constant agitation in his breast.

The wedding feast was the prerogative of the bridegroom's family, but Joachim knew with a certain satisfaction that Jacob simply could not manage; he would have to have help. If Jacob balked he would persuade Joseph himself that this was no occasion for false pride. For Mary's sake there must be musicians, groaning tables, plenty of wine. Hadn't she been the most sought-after girl in town? Hadn't he reminded them of that when they came begging for her hand? How then could they wish to embarrass her by any lack of wine?

He caught himself up at the absurdity of the imagined argument. Surely there would be no such cause for words since the problem must be solved and he was able and glad to do it. He felt almost a fervent need to do it, if only to impress upon everyone that he and Hannah had no regrets about giving their rare jewel of a daughter to the carpenter.

Yet he was impatient to be about it, have done with it. Three months had passed since the betrothal; three months more to go. They had reached the halfway mark, and he sensed that it was a time of crisis, some mounting intensity and challenge. He wished that it were over, that she were already safely married.

Safely? It troubled him that the word had even entered his thoughts.

"Well, friend," he patted the patiently waiting haunches, and set his brown hand once more to the wooden plow, "this is no way to harrow a field."

As they started down the next furrow he saw Hannah's small figure hastening toward him. At once the familiar reflex of gladness smote him. He could never see her like this, his raw little sparrow of a mate, without a sense of blessing. It seemed to him always that she came running to him with her hands outstretched. Always in his secret nature he would anticipate a gift that was probably the more precious because it was so rarely in her power to bestow.

"I'm over here," he shouted as she halted, shielding her eyes from the glare. Joachim pulled back on the ox and plodded toward her, surprised at not seeing the napkin of bread and cheese or the skin of water that she sometimes brought. Then he saw that she gasped for breath, her eyes were huge with alarm, and her face was tear-streaked.

"Hannah! Hannah, what is it? Come sit down." He could feel her convulsive shaking as he led her into the shade of a fig tree. "Are you ill?"

"No. No, it's Mary. Mary—you must come quickly." The world was rocking, she could scarcely see him. "She's the one who's ill, very ill I'm afraid."

"What sort of illness?" he demanded. "A fever?"

"Yes. Yes, a—a fever of the mind. She seems to be possessed!" Hannah clutched at her throat which felt dry and taut and enflamed. "Possessed of an evil spirit."

"Come, now. Our
Mary?"
He laughed shortly, yet he knew that his wife's terror was real. "Get hold of yourself, Hannah, tell me what makes you think this preposterous thing."

"She's having illusions. Fantasies. You remember how she used to have them when she was a child? I punished her for them then, but she's too big to be punished now for these lies!"

Joachim said bluntly, "I told you then and I tell you now, our Mary would never lie."

"No, you wouldn't believe it, you'd never believe ill of her," she accused. "Where Mary's concerned you'd defend her no matter what, you've always been so blind. Maybe if you'd done your duty as a father to her then, if you'd chastised her, made her realize the sin of falsehood, we wouldn't be facing this madness now."

"Madness? Hannah, watch your tongue."

"It's true. Only a mad woman, a person possessed of a demon would tell such a story as she's just told me."

"What story?" In his own mounting fear his tone had become harsh. Now he gripped his wife's shaking shoulders, trying to crush into her some calm. "Hannah, Hannah, quiet now, quiet-tell me—what is this thing she claims?"

Hannah caught her breath, bit her trembling lips. She gazed for a second over the blurred but shining fields, trying to find and shape the words. "She says that she is with child."

"With child?" It was torn from him in a startled cry. His hands dropped. "Whose?" he demanded.
"Joseph's?'
And when she did not speak: "I'll kill him."

"No! No, that I could understand," Hannah told him. "They're in love, it would be natural—an outrage, yes, but natural. That I could bear somehow. But Joachim my husband, listen. Our daughter claims that it is an unnatural child she is going to bear. A—a holy child. That an angel came to her and announced it unto her, and that the seed of Jahveh himself has entered her womb."

Her voice had dropped to a whisper. Her little eyes, raw with fear, were fixed upon his face. Under its roughness, ruddy from the sun, it was going ashen. His lips moved several times before he could speak. "A holy child," he said. "No, no, it cannot be." Slowly, unsteadily, he got to his feet. "A holy child!"

Hannah sprang up too. A new dismay rocked her. Not once had she anticipated this reaction. Romantic though he was beneath his brusque demeanor, mystic, innocent, dreamer, surely he could not accept this incredible thing. "It's blasphemy," she cried. "You must come home with me and help me to save her." She trotted frantically along beside him as he went wordlessly to unhitch the ox. "Poor child," she began to weep afresh, "poor baby. If she is truly in trouble through any man we must make her see that we will forgive her. We'll help her, see that no harm comes to her. But if this be blasphemy, then surely God himself will punish her."

"Blasphemy?" Joachim swallowed. The eyes that turned upon her were grave and mystifying, gazing through and beyond her. And Hannah's soul shriveled for she did not know him any more, this husband whom she had seen so often poring over his scrolls, heard so often discussing it with the more learned ones. She feared for him as she feared for her daughter. "Hannah, Hannah," he said, "have you no faith, either in our own child or your God?"

"You can't believe this thing! Surely you cannot believe it."

"How can I believe anything until I hear what Mary has to say? How can I dare to believe it? I am dumbfounded, Hannah, I am as shocked by what you tell me as you. Our daughter—that it might be even she!"